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Mar. 30th, 2007 01:30 pmA French Nun claims now-dead Pope JP II cured her of Parkinsons. Nice of him. Too bad he never did anything about children in Sierra Leone who had their arms hacked off in the civil war there. God hasn't either. Seems like an oversight while they're going around curing French nuns. French nuns at least get health-care.
Yes, this reasoning is shamelessly stolen from Why won't God heal amputees. As a website trying to tell a story why the concept of God as exploited by religious leaders is hopelessly fucked, it does its job better than most rabid atheist pamphlets out there on the Internet. Reading it I find it is attacking a very specific concept of God, the Touched By An Angel God, the Catholic Pray For Intervention God, with reason and logic, and as I said, one could do worse than deal with that fairy-tale on those terms. Personally, I'd change the site design to be more magazine-like -- visual impressions count -- and re-do the writing to tell the same idea in less words and more impact, but hey, I don't rule the Internet. I mean, for one thing, I don't think this is the most important question to ask about God, as the website claims. I don't know what the most important question is, but why the concept is being used sociologically as some kind of an impotent security blanket is not one of them.
And why stop at Parkinsons, anyway? JP II couldn't fix her teeth? What kind of a second-rate papal miracle healing is that? Oooh, I can remove a degenerative disease that has been attacking millions of braincells for years and clean them up individually, but your teeth, something immediately apparent, no, that's too much work. No, sorry, can't slip that in. God gave you those teeth, you should be happy with them. God gave you Parkinsons too, but I get to call on that. Special papal powers. Man, if I were that nun I'd be worried. There's God sending me a plight to teach me something, and that upstart Pole takes it away. Shit. How much of a hard-ass teacher is God when you come to class empty-handed with the excuse that the Pope ate your homework? And God's already so down on apples, leaving one on the teacher's desk ain't gonna do much. (This bringing apples to teacher is an americanism I still do not know what it is about, BTW.)
I like big stories. I like wonder and magic. That's why I like God. I like hearing about Gods, one or many. Cool Gods. The kind of God that sends you strange prophetic dreams or conjures seas by crying or rides sunny chariots every day or teaches you to read the future from the patterns of leaves on trees or stops you from being defiled by robbers by turning your sari into an endless sea of silk, a garment that never ends, when it is being ripped from you. Those Gods rock. Calling on those inside makes sense. I have an infinitely pliable mind when I don't need to do science or engineering or debugging, I can believe they all exist simultaneously and listen to the ones you have. The one that goes around inspiring Popes to heal random nuns, eh, not so much. Even he's cool, when I can get past his utterly violent and profoundly sociopathic episodes, but his preachers have always sucked. When I find myself calling on something, it is never that version. More like his hippie-ish nephew who, at most, can send ideas or flip bits or make keys re-appear.
Yes, this reasoning is shamelessly stolen from Why won't God heal amputees. As a website trying to tell a story why the concept of God as exploited by religious leaders is hopelessly fucked, it does its job better than most rabid atheist pamphlets out there on the Internet. Reading it I find it is attacking a very specific concept of God, the Touched By An Angel God, the Catholic Pray For Intervention God, with reason and logic, and as I said, one could do worse than deal with that fairy-tale on those terms. Personally, I'd change the site design to be more magazine-like -- visual impressions count -- and re-do the writing to tell the same idea in less words and more impact, but hey, I don't rule the Internet. I mean, for one thing, I don't think this is the most important question to ask about God, as the website claims. I don't know what the most important question is, but why the concept is being used sociologically as some kind of an impotent security blanket is not one of them.
And why stop at Parkinsons, anyway? JP II couldn't fix her teeth? What kind of a second-rate papal miracle healing is that? Oooh, I can remove a degenerative disease that has been attacking millions of braincells for years and clean them up individually, but your teeth, something immediately apparent, no, that's too much work. No, sorry, can't slip that in. God gave you those teeth, you should be happy with them. God gave you Parkinsons too, but I get to call on that. Special papal powers. Man, if I were that nun I'd be worried. There's God sending me a plight to teach me something, and that upstart Pole takes it away. Shit. How much of a hard-ass teacher is God when you come to class empty-handed with the excuse that the Pope ate your homework? And God's already so down on apples, leaving one on the teacher's desk ain't gonna do much. (This bringing apples to teacher is an americanism I still do not know what it is about, BTW.)
I like big stories. I like wonder and magic. That's why I like God. I like hearing about Gods, one or many. Cool Gods. The kind of God that sends you strange prophetic dreams or conjures seas by crying or rides sunny chariots every day or teaches you to read the future from the patterns of leaves on trees or stops you from being defiled by robbers by turning your sari into an endless sea of silk, a garment that never ends, when it is being ripped from you. Those Gods rock. Calling on those inside makes sense. I have an infinitely pliable mind when I don't need to do science or engineering or debugging, I can believe they all exist simultaneously and listen to the ones you have. The one that goes around inspiring Popes to heal random nuns, eh, not so much. Even he's cool, when I can get past his utterly violent and profoundly sociopathic episodes, but his preachers have always sucked. When I find myself calling on something, it is never that version. More like his hippie-ish nephew who, at most, can send ideas or flip bits or make keys re-appear.
